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Consciousness, Physics, and the Holographic ParadigmEssays by A.T. Williams Introduction
The Perpetual Puzzle of NatureNature is a highly complex puzzle that to one degree or another has fascinated all peoples, in all places, at all times. And continued advancements in scientific knowledge leave little doubt that as the constructive representation of the unconditioned one and the conditionally relative many the perpetual puzzle of Nature only seems to grow larger as one or another piece of the puzzle is discovered and put into place. For example, a revolutionary new piece of the perpetual puzzle of Nature discovered by this author in 2001 has significantly increased the scope of science beyond previous theoretical and experimental limits. The novel new discovery, the universal principle of energy, succinctly states that:
The implications of the universal principle of energy are astonishingly broad in scope. The fundamental, irreducible foundation of the nonmaterial primordial energy domain is revealed, the classical and quantum physics of the material domain are subsumed, and the path to the new physics of the 21st century is clear. Indeed, it can now be seen that classical physics, quantum mechanics, and the Standard Model of 20th century elementary particle physics 2 have provided a detailed description of the material domain which occupies the foreground of the complex, conditionally relative puzzle of Nature, and that the massless fundamental, nonmaterial (subquantum, prequantum)3 primordial energy domain provides the unexplored background – the irreducible foundation – of the one and the many.
Fifty years before the development of the Standard Model of particle physics Albert Einstein firmly rejected Niels Bohr's hypothesis that reality per se has meaning only within the explicit act of observation or measurement, and to the end of his life Einstein asserted the objective, independent reality of the material universe. Thus the disparate views of Einstein (1879-1955) and Bohr (1885-1962) can be seen as incompatible and mutually exclusive, yet these two pioneers of 20th century science respected each other and remained friends throughout their lives. The accumulation of scientific knowledge stimulated by the efforts of Einstein and Bohr amply demonstrates that each of them diligently investigated different pieces of the complex puzzle of Nature even as they independently advanced the traditional teaching that particulate matter is the fundamental, irreducible foundation of our finite, local material universe. Interestingly, the historical tradition that matter is fundamental and irreducible seems to be based on a pre-scientific, inherently circular argument of the ancient Greeks handed down from one philosopher-scientist or scholar to another through centuries and millenia. Succinctly put, the matter argument rests on two basic premisses:
The new universal principle of energy strongly implies that many physical laws discovered over the past decades and centuries are necessary but not sufficient. This is not surprising. On the other hand, the discovery of the fundamental, irreducible nonmaterial energy domain opens a novel universal path leading to a more comprehensive 21st century physics. Through the publication of his 1905 paper Does the Inertia of a Body Depend Upon Its Energy Content? which described the first derivation of his mass-energy equation, m = E/c²,4 Einstein led the early 20th century scientific community to the understanding that particulate matter which possesses physical mass, can be weighed, and occupies space in our material universe, is the discrete, organized aggregation of massless nonmaterial energy. One hundred years after the derivation of m = E/c² the novel new universal principle of energy explains the unexpected subnuclear violation (apparent inapplicability) of the conservation of matter/mass law in high-energy particle collider experiments. These nonconservative experimental results – the mysterious, so-called "particle zoo" effect – suggest that the subnuclear region of the atomic nucleus is an open (nonconservative) material system. Thus it turns out that in principle we may live in a holonomic material universe which is itself embedded within an energetic, holonomic spacetime continuum. Nonetheless, the totality of the perpetual puzzle of Nature – the totality of the unconditioned one and the conditionally relative many – remained obscure and difficult to grasp prior to the discovery of the universal principle of energy. If the universal principle of energy is confirmed by experiment, the deterministic clockwork universe of classical physics as well as probabilistic quantum mechanics would apparently be subsumed by the novel new physics of The Energetic Holographic Paradigm (TEHP, pronounced "teep") model of physical reality just-as-it-is. Significant questions about the fundamental nature of matter, mass, and inertia would also be resolved. The universal principle of energy and TEHP (pronounced "teep") separately and collectively subsume the scientific knowledge attributed to Newton, Faraday, Maxwell, Einstein, Bohr, their predecessors, and their successors, thereby providing a robust new physics and a broad new scope of theory and practice for the synthesis of newfound 21st century discoveries and their timely addition to the perpetual puzzle of Nature. Moreover, massless, pervasive, omnipresent nonmaterial primordial energy can now be seen as the fundamental, irreducible foundation not only of our finite, local material universe, but also of the conditionally relative many on every material and nonmaterial level of existence that emerges reciprocally within the uncreated, unconditioned one. This online series of essays is a work in progress which describes the personal understanding acquired by the author while trekking through a few small areas of the 20th century scientific milieu. The reader may also enjoy one or more of the 126 poems listed in the Index of this Web site: Consciousness, Physics, and Holographic Paradigm. Next: Chapter 1, Section 1: The Subquantum Energy Bridge
Reference Notes (Click on the Note number to return to the text): 1 Pais, Abraham. 'Subtle is the Lord...' The Science and the Life of Albert Einstein, Oxford University Press, 1982, pp. 29-30. ISBN 0-19-520438-1 (UK paperback) 2 The Standard Model of elementary particles was developed by Gerard 't Hooft and Martinus J.G. Veltman, recipients of the 1999 Nobel Prize in Physics, from 1970-1974. 't Hooft and Veltman have authored highly recommended books that describe elementary particle physics and the 20th century Standard Model:
3 Subquantum, prequantum: existing prior to the virtual or apparent quantization of nonmaterial primordial energy per se. 4 Einstein, Albert. "Ist die Trägheit eines Körpers von seinem Energieinhalt abhängig?"; Annalen der Physik, 18 (1905): 639-641.
Index: Essays on Consciousness, Physics, and the Holographic ParadigmLast Edit: December 15, 2006. Comments and suggestions welcome. Copyright © 2004-2006 by Alan T. Williams. All rights reserved. |
